According To a Report, The NBA is Looking For A Companion Expansion City.

The saga regarding the Kings is over, as far as Seattle is concerned. As a result, a lot of people are now considering expansion as a serious option. Tweets from Tim Montemayor are now getting serious consideration, as Sonic fans are looking for a solution to the mess that Howard Schultz and Frank Chop made.

Now it seems like that solution is pretty much in hand for us folks up here and Seattle;

NBA has quietly been surverying a number of cities as a companion expansion franchise for Seattle; Omaha, believe it or not, is on list.

Now this is the only source regarding a list of companion cities; but it is the second person to be talking about expansion (after all Montemayor has been talking about it for a while). It is also important to note, that this is pretty much fits with some of the quotes that you were hearing during the press conference regarding the BOG’s decision to keep the Kings in Sacramento.

There is not a time-table in that tweet for expansion, but that is not the most interesting thing in that tweet for me. The interesting part of that tweet is that the league is looking for a companion city to expand too. After all, the NBA was a 29 team league until Charlotte was re-added in 2004. That could actually drag the process out and make it so that the expansion franchise doesn’t happen until 2015-2016 season; and that would Monte’s report-that the league was thinking of 2014-2015-off by one basketball season.

Seattle is going to get a team back, and no matter which report is right (O’Donnell’s or Montemayor’s) the team will tip-off its first season after David Stern has left office. In Seattle, an expansion Sonics will be seen as an event that was born by Adam Silver…not Stern. That is despite the fact that most of the leg work will be done during Stern’s final months as commissioner (and the fact that it has been reported that Stern wants to get a team back in Seattle, granted then they were talking about taking the Kings). It’s unfortunate as well, because it seems to be obvious that Stern has learned a lesson from what happened to the original Sonics.

A lesson that has benefited the fans in Charlotte (Bobcats), New Orleans, and (now) Sacramento.*

*By the way, that’s what we call a tease. You’ll have to wait until our next podcast to find out what I mean 😉